Finally, I address a misconception that has arisen recently in the literature [1]}, [2]}. It is believed that MAIC replicates the unadjusted analysis that would be performed in a hypothetical “ideal RCT” because it targets a marginal estimand, and that MAIC cannot make use of information on prognostic covariates. While all approaches to MAIC target marginal estimands, these produce covariate-adjusted estimates of the marginal effect. The standard one-stage approach to MAIC accounts for covariate differences across studies. The two-stage approaches introduced in this article generate covariate-adjusted estimates that also account for imbalances between treatment arms in the index trial, as is the case in covariate-adjusted analyses of RCTs.
